Currently, end users are able to employ a host of on-line energy savings calculators to estimate the average savings in fuel costs on a per pipe or valve basis. These calculators compute average energy savings by taking the following as input parameters:                1) Pipe or Valve Temperature        2) Ambient Air Temperature        3) Pipe or Valve Size information        4) Type and Thickness of InsulationInputs regarding valve geometry and jacket insulation can usually be obtained from standard vendor specifications. However, pipe and ambient air temperature measurements must be obtained manually (by hand) from the pipe. Usually, this process is done very infrequently since it is difficult to perform and good enough estimates can be derived from historical numbers to prove the economic benefit of purchasing a particular insulation product. Since there are no industry standard tools to measure the performance of an installed insulation product over time, specific performance analysis of insulation products is not done outside of the laboratory due to the difficulty in obtaining the required input parameters.        
It is well known in the industrial piping market that insulating high temperature pipes and valves from the ambient temperature can save a significant amount of energy. Historically, insulators put in place permanent insulation that required removal and replacement during maintenance operations. More recently, removable valve jackets and pipe insulations were innovated to remove the need to replace insulating materials during maintenance. Reusable insulation represents a significant advance for the owner/operators; however, there is no direct means of measuring the energy savings from a program of insulation, be it removable or permanent.
Thus there is a need for a system and device that can obtain the above desired energy savings data and on a regular basis, archive the data, and communicate the data to a device such as a computer, or hand held monitoring apparatus.